An unofficial blog about the National Museum of Health and Medicine (nee the Army Medical Museum) in Silver Spring, MD. Visit for news about the museum, new projects, musing on the history of medicine and neat pictures.

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Thursday, May 14, 2015

Fwd: [caduceus-l] CFP: A Medical History of the Vietnam War

On March 10-12, 2016, the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the Army Medical Department Center of History and Heritage will be co-sponsoring a conference on the medical history of the Vietnam War. This two-day conference will be hosted at the Doubletree Hotel, San Antonio, Texas. Presentations on all facets of medicine and healthcare related to the Vietnam War are welcome to include historical understandings of military medicine as practiced by all participants and in all geographic regions, the repercussions of the war on the practice of medicine, medicine in various campaigns, medical care outside of Vietnam, effects on the home front, postwar medical issues, mental health issues, and related topics.

Conference organizers welcome both individual presentation proposals as well as preorganized panel proposals that include two to three presentations. Conference sessions will follow the standard 90 minute format to include one hour for presentations and 30 minutes for questions and discussion. Presentations by veterans are especially encouraged as are presentations by graduate students. All of the conference organizers are partners with the Department of Defense's Vietnam War Commemoration. In keeping with that partnership, there will be a dignified event to thank veterans for their service.

Proposal submission deadline is October 31, 2015. Please send a 250 word abstract and separate two-page CV/resume to steve.maxner@ttu.edu. If submitting a panel proposal, please include separate abstracts for each proposed presentation and CVs/resumes for each speaker.

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Guide to the Collections of the NMHM 2014 (pdf link)

Disclaimer

The opinion or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology or the National Museum of Health and Medicine.